


Under the Surface

by evership



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Merman!AU, Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:23:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evership/pseuds/evership
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merman!AU, Aomine had met a boy when he was six - a boy with glittering red scales and beautiful red eyes. He’s spent the last twelve years trying to find this mysterious boy again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Surface

Aomine draped himself over the railing and stared out at the vast blue ocean that stretched out before him. The sun, reflecting in the water like a million tiny diamonds, gave the early morning a soft and warm glow. High above, in the cloudless sky, cried seagulls and Aomine closed his eyes and breathed in the salty air. It was his fifth month out on the ocean, all alone and not a care in the world.

Life was simply perfect.

His ship, _The Daunting Lady_ , had been modified so he alone could manage it without a crew. It wasn’t an overly large vessel; it could probably house a handful of people, but Aomine preferred his solitude.  He’d had enough of listening to his friends and family telling him that he was crazy, but he knew – he _knew_ – that the boy he’d played with once in the water, when he was little, hadn’t been human. The memory now had become hazy and blurry, with additional details that might or might not have happened, but he hadn’t forgotten that red hair and those red eyes that had pierced his very core, haunting him for years to come.

Aomine knew that the boy had been a creature of the mysterious deep-blue sea.

One half human, the other half fish.

A merman.

And Aomine was determined to find him again.  

*

Kagami twisted his body in the warm sand and let the sun dry his glittering red scales. He didn’t give a damn about what the others said about visiting the surface during the day; if he wanted to sunbathe, then he sure as fuck was going to sunbathe.

The island he’d found was in the middle of nowhere on the ocean, and sure, there were a couple of sunken ships laying around on the bottom, but the red-headed merman hadn’t seen any sailing ships for years around this area.

Kagami rolled over on his stomach and stretched out his tail fin in the fine sand, he let the dorsal fin on his back rise up and he pulled out his pelvic fins so one lay on each side of him and, with a bit of finesse, even got his anal fin comfortable underneath him.

He snorted.

“Who the hell though _anal fin_ was a socially accepted term to call one of your _visible_ body parts?”

He didn’t know for how long he laid there, but after a while he felt a tingling in his tail and knew he’d soon have the option to transform his tail into human legs. He entertained the idea of exploring the jungle behind him, but it was such a drag to spend an hour slowly growing back scales once he wanted to return to the water.  

_The water_ , he thought. Once he’d met a boy in the water, a human boy. It was his first and only close encounter he’d ever had with one of those land-dwelling beings. Technically the boy hadn’t been _land-dwelling_ at the moment, but still. That blue hair, the dark eyes and the tan skin was something Kagami never would forget. He wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, but maybe it was that kind of love only six-year-olds know of. Nothing complicated with angst and a need and a passion so strong it burned away rationality and sanity, but that kind that left you in awe and a joy of just wanting to spend more time together.

Of course, all things must come to an end eventually.

He wondered if that boy had survived childhood and grown up to live his life, just like Kagami was living his life now. The red-head had thought of going back several times, but he was afraid of what he would find. What if that boy had died? What if he’d taken a wife? What if he already had children?

The last part was probably unlikely, unless it was standard to start a family at the age of eighteen.  

Kagami had explained early on to his family that he wasn’t interested in women, and a small part of him had hoped that they would stay out of his love-life, but his mother and father simply looked for male suitors instead.

That had been awkward.

… What was the probability of that boy being interested in men? Would it be worth a journey back just to see if he’d have a chance? The risk of the boy being dead was something he’d have to take into account, but what if …

What if there was a real chance?

Kagami lowered his dorsal fin and twisted around again. The sky was bluer than ever and the red-head felt his heart flutter.

“Should I go back?” He said out loud. The waves crashed onto the shore, birds cried in the air above, the sun warmed his skin.

He swallowed.

“I should go back.”

Then he chuckled, and the chuckle turned into a laugh.

“Holy fuck,” he sat up and looked at the open sea with newfound purpose. “I’m gonna find him again!”

It was a bit of a task to move around in the sand when you didn’t have any legs, but at least he _could_ move around – even if it looked ridiculous at times. He shifted his body and made a sort of half-roll, half-crawl before reaching the shoreline.

The water looked cool and inviting.

“This is it! Find your man and make him yours, and – and, shit, drown him out of spite if he doesn’t want you!” He laughed again. “Yeah, okay, that sounds totally plausible.”

He dove into the sparkling blue and the water felt wonderful against his warm, dry scales.

*

There wasn’t much to do when you were all alone out on the sea. You could masturbate, but Aomine had done that so many times already that he’d developed a blister between his thumb and index finger.

Not his proudest moment, but at least nobody would ever know about it.

He had a guitar, and a harmonica, a flute and – surprisingly enough – a violin. Bringing instruments had been his mother’s idea and Aomine had first thought it’d been stupid, but now he was grateful. With so much spare time he needed something to do between fishing and looking for mermen.

The guitar was his favorite, hands down. He’d taken a few basic lessons on each of the instruments before leaving, so he knew what he was doing, but the guitar was, by far, the sound he liked the most.

Notes were still a bitch, though, but he forced himself to write them down every time he came up with a new melody he liked. He’d thank himself later. Probably.

He also had a ton of pens and empty notebooks. And regular books, but he didn’t really like reading unless it was about the mysterious creatures of the sea.

He got up from the railing and turned around.

“Oh, fuck.” Far away, in the distance, was an ominous dark border just a few millimeters up from the horizon. Aomine knew an approaching storm when he saw one. He didn’t have to worry just yet, but he’d be in the middle of it within hours.

“Shit,” he cursed again. “Shit, shit, shit!” He was vulnerable out in the open, so he’d have to find an island – preferably – where he could moor the ship until the storm passed. The blue-haired man spun around and gazed out over the water.

“C’mon, I just need one lousy island …”

In the end he had to go below deck to retrieve a pair of binoculars.  

*

The water grew colder and Kagami felt a shiver run up his spine. It was one thing to swim around the shallow waters of an island, or to swim around back home where there were people, but here – out in the open – there was no way of telling how deep it was. The red-head looked down, but he couldn’t see the bottom.

“This was stupid …” He mumbled and swam closer to the surface. It was kind of funny how he almost got dizzy when he looked down, because there was no chance ever of him _falling_ down. He might faint and sink, but falling was unheard of.

The sun was still shining above, yet there was a tension in the air that warned the merman that a storm was approaching. It wasn’t really safe to be alone like this, especially since sharks and giant octopuses tended to come out when there was a storm in the making.

Sharks were mindless bloodthirsty beast and Kagami had lost relatives to them several times. Getting away from sharks was hard, but he’d take sharks over horny octopuses any day.

He shivered. Giant octopuses seemed to have a thing for mermaids and mermen. He hadn’t been molested by one, yet, but he knew of a few people back home that had gotten all of their orifices filled with a slimy tentacle.

Bile rose in his throat and he could almost feel the nasty appendages of a giant ghost over his body, prodding and probing at his … at his …

He broke the surface in a jump to rid the feeling and dove back down in a swirl of bubbles.

Sharks over octopuses _any day_.

*

Aomine gave a shout of joy when he caught sight of a small bump on the horizon. He could barely see it, but he was sure it was an island.  

“And if I’m lucky there’ll be a bay!”

_A bay would be a fucking miracle,_ he thought and turned back to eye the storm. He could see flashes of light and the bluish misty wall suggested that it was raining heavily from the clouds.

It was hard to tell how long it would take to reach safety, since Aomine had no idea of how big the island was, but he guessed a couple of hours.

Once again he found himself with nothing to do. The ship sailed in the right direction and he couldn’t really do anything about the storm.

He reached for the binoculars and leaned over the railing.

*

At first Kagami thought he was imagining things, but the dark shadows turned out to be all too real.

“No, no, _no!_ Not now! Not when I’ve finally decided to do something with my life!”

He knew he was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t so sure about his ability to swim away from a pack of sharks. Being molested by an octopus sounded better than being ripped to pieces, if Kagami was to be completely honest right now.

He made a sharp turn, twisted around, dove deeper and deeper – got scared and swam up to the surface again – but the sharks were relentless and the red-head could feel his strength waning. If this kept up then he’d be a dead man before reaching his nineteenth year.

… And without finding a soul mate.

His mom would be so disappointed.

*

Aomine glanced back at the horizon now and then, just to check that he was still moving _away_ from the storm. The wind had picked up some time ago and it kept tearing at the sail. The sun gave him a false sense of hope, but it was better than nothing.

The island didn’t seem to be that big, but he thought he saw something that might be an opening to a bay. If he was to be completely honest with himself, then he’d admit that his ship probably wouldn’t make it if he didn’t find a place in the lee. _The Daunting Lady_ was well-built, but even the toughest and largest ships could sink in the right kind of storm.

He was about to put down the binoculars, when he caught sight of something moving fast in the water and whatever it was, was approaching his ship _fast._

*

Kagami hadn’t really time to think; the monsters were so close he could almost feel their teeth and he was running out of options.

He saw the hull of a ship and reacted before he could think his plan through.  

*

Aomine screamed when something large and red jumped out of the water. It landed with a wet thud on the deck and struggled for a second before turning around. Aomine’s breath caught in his throat and he stared wide-eyed at the creature in front of him.

“Holy fuck …” He whispered. “You’re a _merman!_ ”


End file.
